


Area Woman Not A Morning, Afternoon Or Night Person

by chekhovsbullet



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Attempt at Humor, Bad Humor, Beth Is Angry, Beth and Hannah Washington Live, Character Study, Coping, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, My First Work in This Fandom, Siblings, The Onion Headlines: The Saga, Therapy, Washington Lodge (Until Dawn), there's... a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24214249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chekhovsbullet/pseuds/chekhovsbullet
Summary: In which Hannah and Beth Washington are too stubborn to die, Beth starts coping with the trauma of almost dying in arguably the worst way and there are a lot of bad jokes compensating with the fact that Beth almost dies and doesn't know what to do with herself following those world-shattering news.Alternatively, a study and analysis of Beth Washington's character and her relationships with the Until Dawn Crew, conveyed in small snippets not unlike a coming-of-age movie and highlighted with some self-serving headlines of The Onion in the longest 'tag yourself' you'll ever see.
Relationships: (maybe) - Relationship, Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley, Beth Washington & Hannah Washington & Josh Washington, Chris Hartley & Josh Washington, Emily Davis/Mike Munroe, Mike Munroe/Jessica Riley, Sam Giddings & Hannah Washington, Sam Giddings/Beth Washington
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26





	1. prohibition should've stuck around

Beth was not mad that she was stuck on supervising duty while everyone got drunk.

Given, she was eighteen, and while that was the legal drinking age in Canada—bless the geography of their family’s swanky winter lodge—it was not the legal drinking age in America nor was it the legal drinking age when all of her friends had a collective total of four brain cells, at most. And that was if she was being optimistic. It was tough stuff, being the only sensible one of the group. Thus, with a combination of being the youngest Washington sibling—and therefore being coddled around by Josh until he fell into a drunken stupor—and all of her friends being dumbasses, Beth was stuck sober on a Saturday night crossing into Sunday morning on their Annual Winter Getaway (Bonus: With Friends!).

It hadn’t been bad a while back. Sam had stayed sober, but that was because she was legally the Mom Friend—and she’d admitted to Beth that she didn’t wanna pass out to wake up with a Sharpie moustache. So Sam was still enjoyable, and mildly buzzed friends were manageable even if Mike’s Eau De Douche was overwhelming in her opinion. Josh and Chris ended up playing Straight Face with some of the pricier bottles of Bob Washington’s Liquor Inventory, so they were out for the count, and eventually the chatter got so obnoxious that Beth made the conscious decision to distance herself and consider finding Chris’ DS so she could spend the night playing Pokémon.

Beth only tolerated Pokémon on drunk nights.

Nevertheless, Beth never got the chance to find Chris’ DS, because next thing she knew she was stuck on cleanup duty.

This blows.

She should get new friends. Or kick these friends out so they could all pile into the generator shed or something.

Cleaning dishes at two in the morning when your friends had fucked off to who-knows-where? Great. Solid. Absolutely amazing. She would not buy a single one of these fools a Christmas present. Except for Sam. Sam was cool. But you’re on thin fucking ice, Sam.

Where _did_ they all go, anyways?

Despite her scrubbing, a glimpse of… something behind the brown shutters she stood in front of caught her eye. She glanced up, then squinted at… a figure. A figure, now retreating right back into the forest past the thicket of trees, obscured by thick snowflakes falling down and beating against the window pane.

“Hey, did you see that?” Beth asked aloud, craning her neck towards the window to see more. Dishes momentarily abandoned, she pressed her palms to the counter to perch. “Dad said it’d just be us this weekend… Josh?”

Weird. How did she not notice that her overly-chatty brother hadn’t spoken a peep for more than three minutes now?

She turned back, then spotted her answer on the other countertop, slouched over in a bar stool.

“Jeez, Josh.” One fucking job. She walked over, then picked up the bottle of whiskey laying a few inches away from her brother’s loosened grasp. This was heavy stuff, which Chris seemed to agree with with a noncommittal snore from his side of the counter. Beth rolled her eyes, then patted Josh’s shoulder—none too gently, either—before remarking, “Once again brother, you’ve outdone us all.”

She set the bottle down, then thought better of it and swept them—along with the plastic red solo cups that crunched under her tight grasp and upon collision with the glass bottles—into a trash bag. Beth was just moving from the pile surrounding her dorky brother and his even dorkier friend when a piece of paper caught her eye at the far end of the corner—something that had not been there before.

Her fingers slid over the cool stone counter before snatching the note up, turning it over and inspecting the words scrawled on it in a font that she recognised from the arrogant boy who’d been trying to copy her calculus homework since high school—signed with not one, not two, but _three_ ‘X’s, and _Mike_ sloppily added on to the end.

Beth knew that if she rolled her eyes again, they’d roll out of her skull, so she took to scoffing instead. “Oh my God.” She glanced towards Josh’s sleeping figure, then shook her head. “He could’ve signed it as Bozo the Clown while he was at it. Not even Hannah would buy this shit.”

… Or would she?

Her remark barely had time to echo throughout the empty kitchen and dining area before a _thump_ was heard under the floorboards among a racket of voices. Within moments, the shutters revealed a figure outside, much closer than she’d last seen it, storming past the windows in an indistinguishable blur. She startled, jerking away from the counter and the paper. _What the_ —

Before she realised it, Beth had rushed over to her brother’s prone form, shaking his shoulder. “Josh!” No response. She tried to drag him to his feet. “ _Josh_!” Not even a grunt. “Fuck.”

Damn this entire house. Why was she always the responsible one?

Beth sprinted out of the kitchen area and into the living room, proclaiming, “Guys, there’s someone outsi—what the hell?”

More footsteps, heading in the same direction as the figure she’d seen at the window. How drunk were these people? Shaking herself, Beth surged forward, yanking her pink down jacket from one of the armchairs still draped over with a white cloth, before foolishly—and also sober, so she didn’t even have the alcohol to blame for her stupid decisions—pursuing.

What met her was the backs of six of her friends, with Sam calling out Beth’s twin’s name into the night. “ _Hannah_!” That, among the darkening sky growing thicker with snowfall and the dark expanse of the forest ahead of them, away from the comfortable lighting of the lodge, was enough to set a pit of anxiety into Beth’s gut. She pulled the jacket on in record time, shoving past her friends to stare into the darkness.

“What’s going on?” She demanded, the question more directed at Sam than anyone within that group. Even with that, her eyes weren’t focused on them—instead focused on the darkness to potentially make out the shape of Hannah somewhere, or spot footprints in the snow that could lead the way. “Where’s Hannah going?”

From behind Beth, she could hear an exasperated sigh. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was Jessica, followed by her slightly-sobered tone. “Ugh, it’s fine… she just can’t take a joke.”

“It was just a _prank_ , Han!” Emily called out after her, though there was no evidence of concern in her tone. Normally, Beth wouldn’t care too much—she knew Emily and she knew her tough love and usually apathetic voice—but in that moment, it sounded downright childish, and _stupid_. Irritation flared up in Beth’s veins.

“What did you _do_?” Beth demanded, whirling around to pin Emily with a seething glare. The girl had the decency to look somewhat abashed at that, but otherwise swayed on her feet with a tell of tipsiness still wearing off. 

“We were just messin’ around, Beth…” Mike looked inclined to reach for her arm. “It… It wasn’t serious—”

Beth reared back, raising a finger to his face once before scowling and dropping it again. A glance to Sam, Ashley and Matt—two of whom looked guiltier than the former party, who was peering into the direction of the woods just like she had a moment ago. _You let this happen?_ She wanted to demand, rage claiming her thoughts. _You fuckers didn’t_ do _anything?_

Instead, she stepped backwards, but not before snapping, “You _jerks_!” At the group before her. And then, her feet were picking up the pace, and she was turning away from the warm lights into the lodge and sprinting into the cold embrace of the woods. “Hannah!” She kept running, past the first trees and down the trail of footprints where she’d last spotted it. " _Hannah!_ ”

Beth ran and ran and ran, the wind whipping past her hair and her face and almost tearing off her light grey beanie. She raised a hand to steady it, before tugging it down against her head with more force and surging forward past tree branches and rocks still visible in the thicket of snow ahead of her.

How the fuck was she meant to find Hannah when God’s snow machine broke at this convenient hour?

God, she hated her life. Always the responsible one, her mom and dad had said. That’s because her brother was… okay, to be fair, he had his fair share of problems, and then Hannah was just deprived of attention, and _fuck_ , she didn’t _want_ to be mad when she was looking for her sister. She _cared_ , she knew she cared, and those guys were fucking jerks for doing something like that when they _knew_ how Hannah would get, they _knew_ they would’ve hurt her—

“Damn it, Hannah, where are you?” She panted. If she knew she’d be running in the Canadian winter like this, she would’ve stayed on the soccer team.

In hindsight, the path should’ve seemed familiar. She’d gone up here before, and had managed fine all the same. Maybe it was the frantic pace she was whipping past wayward twigs and logs now that had managed to disorient her. Or it was the haze of snow that was slowly settling down on her eyelashes, making it difficult to blink against the wind howling in her ears.

“ _Hannah_!” To no avail. Maybe the snow storm was drowning her words. Maybe Hannah was nearby and Beth was running circles. Maybe Hannah had come back to the lodge already and she was out here for no reason. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

She kept running.

The path was looking… familiar.

Where in the great white fuck was she heading to? And when the hell did Hannah get so goddamn _fast_? Did she sneak it in during her tennis practices? She probably snuck it in during her tennis practices.

A cacophony of snapping twigs behind her alerted her to the real world, causing her shoulders to jerk and her body to spin around rapidly. Nothing. “Jesus, fuck.”

She turned, then called again. “Hannah!”

Up ahead—a small clearing. And… a form. A form that looked an awful lot like her freezing cold twin sister.

“Hannah?”

“Hello?”

“Hannah!”

She lurched forward, already tugging at the zipper of her coat. Hannah was still wearing the short-sleeved button-up blouse that she’d put on at the start of the night, with the hopes to ‘grab Mike’s attention’. Beth could remember how giggly Hannah had been while saying those words, and how her and Sam had shared that same mature look of disapproval between them. A distant memory, in contrast to the puffy-eyed girl clutching at her bare arms covered in goosebumps now.

“You must be freezing,” she breathed out, tugging the jacket off before handing it over to Hannah. The girl sniffled, then stood from her crouched position in the snow. Flakes of snow clung to the knees of her favourite jeans, a few flakes condensing into droplets on her thick-rimmed glasses. “Here, take this.”

“I’m _such_ an idiot,” Hannah cried out, though she took the coat with no hesitation. “I’m so dumb…”

Beth wanted to agree. In that moment, she wanted to be the responsible sister, to say ‘I Told You So’ just how she’d said it a thousand other times when she was proven right, but in that exact moment, seeing the drying tear tracks on her sister’s face and the pinch between her brows, Beth couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she helped Hannah adjust the coat on her form, patting the shoulders as some semblance of comfort.

In that moment, another twig broke behind her.

Hannah’s head snapped in the direction of the noise at the same time as Beth’s did.

“Hannah…?”

“Beth?”

What.

In the seven fucks.

Was _that_.

And before she knew it, all that exhaustion from before had seeped from her spirit, consumed by an indeterminate amount of adrenaline bundling into an immediate fight-or-flight response. Beth stumbled away, in a trance, then broke into a dead sprint, yanking Hannah’s arm next to her to gain momentum against the cool whip of snow before them.

 _Fuck_. fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfcukfcukfcufkc—

They staggered past a log, where Hannah tripped and Beth barely had time to grab her twin’s arm and pull her to her feet like a sack of potatoes and they were running again, sobs drowned by the wind. They ran on and ahead, past the slippery slope of one of the river bridges, and towards another set of rocks.

Beth leaped down, snow falling into her boots and clinging to her leggings, the cold almost numbing her senses entirely. Behind her, Hannah fell, landing in the snow with a dull snap and a scream. “Hannah!”

She immediately pivoted around at the sound of Hannah swearing, surging forward to tug Hannah to her feet in short, quick yanks. Her twin stumbled and screamed again, one leg clearly giving way. Beth managed to conjure enough curses inside her mind to make a sailor blush, before hoisting one of Hannah’s arms over her shoulders before beginning the arduous lug forward. Except, it was not a long distance before Beth realised her fatal flaw.

The wind tore and whipped at them, shaking the ‘DANGER: CLIFF EDGE’ sign so hard Beth was sure it would tumble off with the sheer force of the storm. Snowflakes obscured half of Beth’s vision, smudging the view of the moon hovering over mountaintops surrounding them, but despite all this obscurity Beth could clearly see the cliff edge that they’d managed to stumble to.

Beth turned back, swearing loudly.

There were three types of fears that had always stood out to Beth and had been drilled inside her mind by horror movie mogul father Bob Washington; deception, coercion, and self-doubt. She often found it relevant when she thought about objects, specifically when there may have been an object forced or overtaken by something far worse, and was no longer what it originally was. Maybe that was also a fear of change, but Beth wasn’t about to get into the nitty-gritty details. She was no shrink.

But that thing. It was. It _looked_ humanoid, to some extent. Parts of it suggested that it may have been human at some point, with its great large eyes and four limbs and altogether human-ish shape. If the snow storm had blinded Beth any further, she could’ve even considered it human.

But the rotting flesh, and its pointy teeth. The milky eyes, and unnatural _thinness_ to its limbs as it crouched, perched on hands and feet before them angled at these odd angles and _screeching_. All those things were so… inhuman.

That thing could’ve been human at one point, for all Beth fucking cared.

But it sure as hell was not human anymore.

And that thought made terror seize her skin and her blood run colder than any of the snow she’d made her way through up to this point.

Beth pushed Hannah behind her, trying her best to shield her twin from enduring the vision any longer, maybe give her a living chance when they were stuck between the precarious edge of a cliff and _that_.

From behind the line of trees, a figure burst out, and suddenly, ice clashed with the billow of flames erupting before her.

The screech that followed it almost drowned out the howl of the wind, contesting nature with the monstrosity before them. Its movements were rapid and jerky, moving from side to side in a desperate attempt to evade the flames, and Beth’s mind suddenly clicked that the figure had a goddamn _flamethrower_.

If she weren’t currently fearing for her life, she might’ve pointed out how badass that was.

The creature skittered to the side, still screeching and its skin singing and twisting from its mangled form, until the stranger with a flamethrower was closer to them than the creature. And suddenly, the creature half-collapsed under the force of fire, before rising and soaring into the thicket of the forest in movements so quick Beth would’ve missed them had she not been staring so intently and rigidly her muscles hurt with the force she’d been using to keep herself still.

She dully registered how tightly she was clasping Hannah’s hand and how Hannah’s nails had in turn dug crescents into the back of her hand.

The stranger turned towards them.

And suddenly, the ground gave way and Hannah was falling and Beth was falling with her—

Only for Beth’s hand to wrap around a branch that had twisted its way out of the cliff face, the cold biting against her hand but her innate urge to stay alive overpowering any pain she could’ve felt at that precise moment.

Beth tilted her head upwards, wind still whipping at her face and hair, and almost felt relief loosen her shoulders at the sight of a face obscured by goggles and a bandana peering over the cliff, one hand reaching out to them.

She couldn’t let Hannah go. _She couldn’t_.

With all the strength she could muster—part adrenaline, part twin instincts, part something else—Beth swung her right arm upwards, flinging Hannah upwards and above her with the force. Beth held her breath—

And released it when Hannah’s other hand connected with the stranger’s outreached arm.

Beth felt a lot lighter.

But the threat was not gone—Beth knew that. She knew her grasp on the branch was slipping, and that the branch was growing weaker and frailer with every moment Beth stayed hanging onto it. She knew that there was an open expanse of _something_ below her, a cavern of darkness and a hill of icy rocks which could snap her body to pieces the moment she fell. She knew that the cold winter air would not be forgiving to her when she fell and when she died, only to rot away. With every single thing her mind managed to remind her of in the seconds she continued dangling while Hannah—her twin, other half of her soul—was hoisted up and into safety, Beth felt herself growing colder and much more afraid.

Beth was not often afraid. And Beth did not often cry.

But at that precise moment, it felt that either option was favourable to the unsavoury demise meeting her below.

Hannah had disappeared over the edge. _Safe_. At least one of them.

The branch groaned, then snapped.

Beth screamed, falling—

Only for a hand to reach out and grab her arm, almost jerking her shoulder out of the socket. Her legs dangled precariously below her, body shuddering with the force of an almost-freefall. But another realisation drowned out the rest of them. She would not die today.

The stranger started tugging her up, until Beth finally felt her nerves boot up again and she managed the final struggle over the edge on her own, knees colliding with the snow and rocks below. Half her body had been doused in snow, but the most important part was that she was _alive_. Shit, she was alive. She’d—she’d almost died—that thing—

“You girls get the hell out of here,” the man, tone deep and gruff but above all _alarmed_ , said, “It’s gonna come back soon.”

Beth did not need to hear that twice to heed his advice. She couldn’t even muster words to express her gratitude before she was lugging her sister back to her feet—or, uh, foot—and pulling her back into the forest despite her mind’s screeching protests.

Or was that the screech of the creature? _Fuck_. She didn’t know.

The rest of the path passed by them in a blur, the snowstorm still raging though it had miraculously calmed down sometime between Beth hanging on for her life and the two of them hobbling back into the forest. Both of the twins were too shell shocked to speak at the moment, though Beth could pin Hannah’s silence on the pain she was suffering from her leg. One fleeting look downwards, to watch where they were stepping, had given her enough confirmation—Hannah’s left leg was angled unnaturally, looking downright _wrong_. The thought made even more nausea rise inside Beth's gut than before.

Beth’s head felt like she’d gone on an infinitely long merry-go-round after eating too much cotton candy. Cotton candy stuffed inside her head, dulling all her thoughts, the sweetness of it making her tongue feel acidic inside her own mouth, stomach twisting and turning with nausea. For a moment, she swore she was still spinning in circles.

Falling, falling, falling…

The cabin. Shit, it was so close. They could… they could go there instead.

Beth was not brave enough to face the storm back to the lodge when there was a horrifying creature, no longer human, lurking nearby. She couldn’t say for certain _what_ it was—she’d never seen anything like it before—but it sure as fuck didn’t look like it had chased Hannah and Beth through the woods to give them a cuddle and a high five before parting ways.

Ugh. Awful train of thought. Now, which way to the cabin…

When they found the cabin, it had been a miracle Beth had managed to keep Hannah upright with how violently her shoulders had been tremoring. She wasted no time in finding the spare key, before promptly unlocking the door and barging her shaking shoulders against the wood of it. That had admittedly been a bit more painful, especially considering it took three heaving tries to force the door open, but the moment it gave way Beth quickly staggered to gain her balance, almost toppling straight on her face.

She missed twice when trying to grab Hannah’s arm from where her twin had been propped up against the side of the cabin, Beth’s vision blurring considerably from what she suspected wasn’t even the snowflakes dancing on her eyelashes anymore. Finally, she got Hannah, and gently shoved her into the cabin before yanking the key out and jamming the door shut again.

At least… at least they were indoors now.

Beth’s hands looked grey.

“Are you… y’alright?” Beth managed to ask, though her lips felt oddly numb. Damn it, mouth. Not a great time to stop working. Hannah turned around after a moment, arms wrapped around herself, before she slumped onto the couch with another considerable wince. “Bad question, I know. Your leg’s fucked.”

“I… I can’t move it, Beth. I can’t walk anymore. Please…”

“It’s… s’okay, Hannah. We can stay here.”

Beth swallowed the lump in her throat, staggering forward. Her cold, numb fingers reached up to tug off her snow-covered beanie, letting it drop onto the ground of the cabin lounge room with a dull _thud_ before heading over to the table where she spotted a small book of matches. _Thank God_.

“What’re we gonna do, Beth?” Hannah asked, quietly. Almost inaudible. Beth paused, pressing her lips together as her eyebrows scrunched. Her limbs ached so much, and she was so _tired_ , but she knew Hannah would freeze to death if she didn’t manage to start a fire soon.

“I don’t know, Han,” she mumbled, hobbling over to the fireplace to throw a few logs in. That alone managed to siphon her of most of the energy she had left following the adrenaline that had drained the other half. “We just… we just, uh… fuck. We have to wait.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah whined out, bordering on a sob. Beth turned back sharply, then regretted that when the cabin swam and swayed in her vision. The book of matches was still in her hands, at least, so she hadn’t fully lost her coordination yet. “I’m… I shouldn’t have…”

“Hey,” Beth snapped out. Her jaw felt locked tight, her tongue leaden. Fuck, she was so tired. How did she still have so much fire in her voice? She felt like passing out. “None of this is your fault. Okay?”

The fire in her voice left her cold when it sizzled away, shivering some more. She fumbled with the matches, throwing the first one that caught on fire into the mess of logs and old newspapers into the fireplace. For a moment, Beth felt warmer, then the cold seemed to take hold of her again.

Hannah did not respond. She didn’t need to.

Beth knew that, in her righteous twin-duty, she should’ve been more awake now, ready to run back to the lodge to punch every single fucker that was the cause of the two of them being out in the snow storm and having encountered that goddamn monster in the jaw so hard they’d be feeding off tubes for the rest of their lives. She should’ve been _mad_ , because Beth was always mad. It was so easy to be mad and defensive and irritated when her brother was too drunk to care and Hannah was too nice to act on her own. That left Beth, and Beth was always mad.

She was too tired to care now.

She could be… could be mad in the morning...

* * *

“... Coming to…”

Beth’s eyes snapped open. _More like_ came to _, sucker._

What met her was a blank white ceiling, slightly shadowy but white nevertheless. There were two strips of ceiling lamps, but neither were turned on, the source of light coming from… wait. Wait, Beth had to angle her head for this. Aha—the window to her right, with its half-drawn blinds letting slivers of sun invade the privacy of this blank white room. 

The next thing Beth noted was that she was laying down horizontally, and that there was a pillow underneath her head and a blanket draped over her body practically pinning her to the mattress. And then, the rest of her senses kicked in, and she could hear hushed chattering and she could smell hand sanitiser in the air and she could feel cotton beneath her fingertips and when she angled her head over to the left she could see another bed and people.

Now, where in the cinnamon toast fuck was she?

She seemed to have said that particular sentiment out loud, because one of the people spun around, before the person became Sam-shaped and cried out, “Beth!” Suddenly, Sam was at her bedside, half-leaning over the railing of the bed Beth was laying down in, green eyes flooded with concern and purple smears under her eyes taking the shape of exhaustion and simultaneous relief. “Oh my God, you’re awake.”

“Yeah, unfortunately,” was what Beth had _wanted_ to say, but all that came out was a dry croak on a sandpaper tongue. Sam moved around to even further down her bedside, before a glass of water was suddenly shoved in her face and she had no choice but to drink up. Now that she was reasonably hydrated again—no thanks to Sam—Beth pressed her lips together, blinking blearily and trying to shift on the mattress of the bed she was bound to. “What the fuck happened?”

“You… you don’t remember?” Sam asked. Beth stared at her blankly in a way that she hoped conveyed the word ‘no’. “You were freezing cold, it was a miracle the two of you even survived—”

“Thank God Chris suggested the guest cabin, otherwise we would’ve probably still been looking for you two,” Ashley came forward. And suddenly, Beth’s mind kicked into overdrive and her brain supplied a helpful flash of memories that led her into mustering the most displeased scowl she could.

“I wonder who we have to blame for that,” she snapped.

Ashley had the decency to look genuinely ashamed this time, stepping back from the bed with glassy, red-rimmed eyes and a helpless expression. Sometimes, Beth considered feeling bad for the girl, but then she also remembered why she was here— _the hospital_ , Beth’s mind supplied—and she felt annoyance rise up again.

“Beth, come on, that’s not fair,” Mike appeared, with his pragmatic voice as per usual. And if they thought she was gonna be mean to Ashley? Oh boy, this fucker was lucky she was bed-bound right now.

“Oh, fuck _off_ ,” Beth sighed, almost considering rolling over on her bed just so that she didn’t have to see Captain Douche’s face. “Why are you even here?”

“He helped look for you two,” Emily appeared in her vision. “We all did. The least you could do is act grateful.”

“Act gratef—shut up, Em,” Beth found herself lashing out at everyone possible. Maybe while she’d been asleep, all her rage had been building up inside her like a dormant volcano, and now was a good time to pull a Mount Vesuvius on her metaphorical Pompeii consisting of the six worried people standing over them. Where the hell was Josh? Her parents? Did they just not care? Was her sister alright?

“Beth, come on, you’re still injured…” 

“I don’t care,” Beth snarked, before beginning her struggle to sit up to chastise the room properly. Her limbs felt like jelly, which admittedly made the whole ordeal of getting mad at her visitors all the more difficult, but finally, she propped herself up to face the group without getting a double chin, and she was _mad_ . “You guys are so… stupid! How could you guys _do_ that to Hannah? What the hell is wrong with you all?!”

A nurse entered the room. Mike tried to reason, “Beth, you need to calm down…”

“Fuck you,” she spat. She didn’t even notice the nurse and her stupid needle of whatever-the-hell connecting to her IV. “I’ll get a restraining order on you. I’ll get a restraining order on your mom. I’ll get a restraining order on myself. Fuck you.”

The last thing that registered inside her mind were the concerned faces of her friends looking down at her, and then Beth lost control of her body once again and was flung into the darkness once more.


	2. dr. ass jerk hill

As the youngest child of the Washington family, Beth was used to hand-me-downs.

Obviously, not _clothes_ , because when Hannah grew, she also grew, and Josh was a boy, so unless she was stealing from his designer collection of hoodies with varying grease stains, no dice. But when it came to anything else, it was mostly fair game. Hannah finished reading a brand-new book? This book belonged to Beth now. Josh had practically fried a video game’s cartridge with how often he’d played it and didn’t want it anymore? Chances are, it wound up in Beth’s useless knick knacks she occasionally indulged time in. Anything could be handed down if you got creative enough, and by golly were the Washingtons creative.

What Beth didn’t expect was that she’d get a fucking hand-me-down _therapist_.

There was something so trivial in the awkwardness of not knowing how to go about speaking with a therapist her older brother had hogged before—Josh still visited this guy from time to time, but he was so cool he got _two_ therapists. Hannah was with some nice lady named Mary—or Monica? Millicent? It was an M name and that was all Beth could bother to remember—and Beth got the therapist with a dough face and a smug half-smile.

This therapist was definitely Josh’s style. She could see Josh getting along with this guy insanely well, considering his Hannibal Lecter complex and airy remarks bordering on nonchalance. Nonthreatening to anyone’s vulnerability, and exactly what a guy as guarded as Josh would need.

Beth’s style? She voted thumbs down.

His office was big and lavish, as any expensive shrink would have it. He sat in a cool spinning chair, had a weird triptych Beth did her best to ignore most of the time on the wall, and a name plate that read _Dr A.J. Hill_.

Beth had begun theorising that his name stood for Doctor Ass Jerk Hill. Partly because she forgot his actual name, definitely because he was a fucking douche canoe.

Seriously, who was this man. Clinking his spoon against a tea cup that amount of times without even making an announcement should be made illegal.

“... Bethany?” She shook out of her thoughts. “Still listening?”

“Sorry, I,” she paused. What could she say? She didn’t care enough to listen? She found herself struggling to focus? She was busy looking at the triptych behind him and focusing on the one figure in it that looked just like the creature she’d encountered?

He didn’t let her formulate an excuse. Instead, he took a long sip of his tea, then set it down again. “It’s alright if you get distracted sometimes,” he said. “The mind wanders of its own volition, especially when one is processing grief and trauma.” This guy was a big fan of pauses. “The only thing I ask you to do when you get distracted is to tell me what is distracting you.”

“I don’t know,” Beth said, but not without pausing herself.

Hill gave her that Pitying-Adult-Glance that told her that he knew she was lying.

Yet he didn’t prod. “Have you considered keeping a diary, Bethany?”

“Just Beth is fine,” she corrected. He looked at her expectantly, still stirring his tea with that awful clinking noise. Recovering, she continued, “And, uh… no, I have not. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m no longer in middle school.”

“Keeping a diary is not just a trait of middle schoolers, Beth,” Hill continued. “Many adults keep diaries—journals, if you may. They are there to help you keep track of whatever you like, or write down whatever you need—thoughts, feelings, important events… that’s the best part of journaling; it’s limited only to what the writer wants.”

“That sounds very middle school to me.”

She knew that she was being annoying. Could she help it? Absolutely not. Beth’s greatest gift was her sarcasm, and she’d wear it out until its bitter, bitter death. Not to mention that it was fantastic at helping her deflect questions that she didn’t want to answer, something that came in abundance following early February. Some of it from the police, others from doctors and nurses, a little bit from her friends and family, and now this fucking guy.

It had been a month since her parents had dragged her to the therapist’s office, thrown her into Dr. Ass Jerk Hill’s room, and left to go to brunch at two in the afternoon or whatever rich parents did in their spare time. In hindsight, a month should’ve been enough for Beth to warm up to the Swedish Prodigy of Psychological Smugness, but alas, here she was, still despising the entire office and its swanky Hannibal Lecter vibes.

“Bethan—Beth? Are you sure you’re listening?”

She blinked again, and Dr. Hill had practically finished his tea by now. What the fuck? Did the man scuff it while she was busy zoning out? No, she swore he’d been taking careful sips a minute ago. Unless he was preparing to turn into a fire breathing dragon with chugging hot liquid. She shook her head, then realised what she was doing, and nodded again.

“I think we may need to reschedule this to a time where you feel more inclined to listen,” Dr. Hill mused, shifting in his seat. “I can’t help you if you’re not willing to get help.”

“I’m sorry,” Beth muttered, having the decency to at least feel ashamed. Partly because Dr. Hill, smug as he was, was _really_ good at guilt-tripping Beth when she was being an insufficient bastard, and partly because her parents coughed up decent amounts of cash to have him waste his time on her and they’d probably be pissed if she came out of therapy still grumpy, annoyed and depressed. “Can we, uh… please continue.”

“I really do think you could commence—or at least consider buying—a personal log,” he added.

“Middle school diary,” Beth corrected. Hill looked somewhat amused.

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“What would I even write about?” She demanded. “Cute girls? The constellations in the sky? Every _Onion_ headline that I find funny?” Why was she such a bitter asshole? Was she growing self-aware? Was this going to come up in a future therapy session when Hill inevitably forced her into the plush armchair behind the desk and next to that window and make her talk until she finally cried?

Dr. Hill, bless his soul for once, continued to look amused at Beth’s half-ranting. Maybe it was the success of knowing that this was the most words and emotion he’d gotten out of her since she’d started this therapy thing, or maybe he was having an epiphany on his own. Nevertheless, his eyes gleamed almost enigmatically as he propped his chin onto his folded hands propped up on that big oak table. “If you want to write about _Onion_ headlines you find funny, you can do just that.”

Beth paused, then squinted at Hill. That smart bastard—

“Oh, no, the illusion of choice,” she said, in a tone that was hopefully flat enough to convey her mild annoyance into having been talked into an open-ended corner. “Whatever will I do.”

“That’s the spirit,” Dr. Hill remarked, adjusting his position. The afternoon sun gleamed into the large looming window to her right, and Beth sunk further into the comfort of the armchair to hide away from it. “But… you do understand the necessity of this, yes?”

“No, I don’t actually,” Beth said. “Is there actually a point to this? Isn’t diary-writing usually reserved for the ice-cream-tub criers and sensitive souls and… and…”

 _And people like Hannah_ , her mind concluded.

How did she not realise sooner? The entire activity _screamed_ Hannah. Of course, Hannah had already gotten a diary before The Incident™, as Beth had so poignantly taken to describing it. It was a pink leather-bound thing with sparkles and butterflies doodled into the margins, and Beth had seen Hannah scrawl into its blank pages so many times before. So how the hell had her mind not connected the dots already?

Dr. Hill thought she was _weak_.

And, yeah, her brain was insulting Hannah by saying that, but it was the _truth_.

“Processing trauma is not reserved for ‘sensitive souls’, Beth,” Hill snapped her out of her reverie, looking far less amused and a little bit more serious than last time. “Everyone has the right to reflect on what they have gone through, and allow themselves to move past that experience so they can grow stronger.” He paused momentarily to jot something down on a brown-backed notepad with a gleaming black fountain pen that practically _winked_ at her. “You can’t change what happened. But you can accept it, and move on.”

Beth stared dumbly. Finally, her defense kicked in again. “I swear I read that in a gift shop somewhere.”

“The past is beyond our control,” he continued, unphased by her remark. She almost wanted to feel frustrated. When had her snappy remarks stopped bugging people? When had the annoyance or shame at being verbally torn to shreds become something far worse that resembled _pity_? “However, that does not mean that you let your past control you.”

“I’m not letting my past control m—In what dimension did you come to this conclusion?” Beth sparked up again, once more angry. “I’m not letting _shit_ control me.”

Dr. Hill looked at her, then pursed his lips and continued jotting things down. “No, I suppose you’re not.”

Case in point. Dr. Ass Jerk Hill had it out for her. He’d come to conclusions, she’d call him out on his bullshit and he’d drop it like a bag of hot coals. Only they seemed to land on her chest, singing past her sternum and squeezing the moisture out of her lungs until she was a hollowed-out shell, and then she was left cold in the wake of the coals cooling down. And then she just felt guilty for being so damn angry all the time.

As the session finished up, Beth found herself a little less angry than when she’d entered Dr. Hill’s office. Given, it was difficult to feel all too mad with that classical music faintly playing in the background and a cute little Swedish flag on the side of Hill’s desk and the stupid teacup with is reassuring clinking. But as she stood, her therapist— _and Josh’s therapist, too_ , her brain added unhelpfully—stopped her, standing as well.

“Do consider investing in a journal of some sorts. Think of it as your homework.”

Beth stared at the man. “I still don’t know what to write about.”

“You were considering those, uh… _Onion_ headlines you found funny, no?”

Oh, no. He was definitely taking the piss out of her. He looked earnest, but there was that slight enigmatic gleam in his eyes again, reminding her that he had some secret psychologist language that she’d never be able to decipher. Finally, she decided she’d had enough of getting annoyed for the day, and pressed her lips together. “I’ll consider it.”

* * *

When Beth was released from the hospital, she was proficient in being pushed out of the spotlight and back into the shadows.

Her brother was immediately put into more therapy, clearly shaken and not stirred following their almost-disappearance and almost-death on his (unconscious) watch, with both Dr. Hill and Dr. Clemens. Not that that meant he didn’t care; he checked up on Beth every morning and every evening, same as Hannah. Like a ritual—he walked into their rooms, assessed them, and then left, in some conscious attempt to control their whereabouts and wellbeing and make sure they were still there and safe.

Beth couldn’t find herself getting mad at Josh.

Her sister was also put into therapy, but this was where things took a twist; Hannah’s leg had been so mangled from when it had been broken and frozen that physiotherapy was on the top of her priority list, as she struggled to walk again. It was nothing short of devastating for the girl who passionately played in knockout tennis, but it was an evil necessity required. Hell, it was a miracle Hannah was able to walk at all. And with that, she also got a therapist, harrowed by the prank her friends committed on her—although, she’d been happy to welcome Sam back into her arms and was slowly, carefully forgiving the others with more ease than Beth had ever managed—and whatever creature the two of them had seen. Even if no one believed them about that particular detail, and nobody ever would.

Beth couldn’t find herself getting mad at Hannah, either.

In fact, Beth couldn’t find herself getting mad at a lot of people, nowadays—instead, she’d taken to being mad at herself and the world. Filled with vitriol, she still glared at the rest of the group, she pushed her mom and dad away even further (this wasn’t much of a challenge, but if she thought about that for too long she’d feel even worse), and she had the capability to get mad at just about anything. Anything, of course, except for Josh and Hannah.

The worst part was? She _wanted_ to be mad at them.

It used to be so easy.

You wanna know what also used to be easy? Making fun of Hannah for owning a middle school diary.

And here she was, in Target, standing in the books & stationery aisle and wondering what colour she wanted her diary.

Somewhere in the distance, Hannah was frothing. And Josh was laughing. And Younger Beth was sobbing.

Actually, Current Beth was tempted to start sobbing, too.

In the end, Beth was frustrated in the amount of choices and the frankly dangerous price differences in notebooks due to minor details, and opted to stay neutral with a grey hardcover, yanking it off the shelf with complete disregard to the price tag and more in a hurry to get herself the fuck out of this situation. On the way out, she grabbed a set of PaperMate ballpoint pens, because it wasn’t like she had enough stationery at home cluttering her desk, and threw all of these items along with a KitKat bar onto the conveyor belt, only to be met with the overly-cheerful expression of a teenage girl serving the checkout lane.

The downfalls of customer service, Beth supposed. It wasn’t like _she_ would be able to pull off smiling at whatever geezer walked past the doors of this Target 24/7. If Beth weren’t so annoyed with everyone and life itself, she would’ve taken the time to admire the girl’s strength.

“Will that be all?” The girl chirped. Beth made a noncommittal grunt of disagreement, before forking over a twenty-dollar bill, grabbing the two items from the conveyor, and leaving without an attempt to receive her change. And thus she walked, with her newly bought not-hand-me-down pens and her not-hand-me-down _diary_ like a kitschy eighth grader waiting to confess all her deepest and darkest secrets about some abominable crush on a guy whose bag smelled of Axe body spray.

Beth was not mad.

Nope, absolutely not.

And with that, Beth walked home—yes, walked; despite her having her driver’s license and currently considered sane enough to drive, her parents and Dr. Ass Jerk Hill had recommended going outside more to ‘absorb vitamin D’ and ‘enjoy the sun’ and ‘suffer under the Californian heat rolling in’—and back to the great big mansion she lived in. The final trek from the security gates to the front door felt like it stretched on for half an eternity and, by this point, Beth was inclined to consider never listening to anybody’s advice ever again. She yanked off her hoodie, kicked off her sneakers, and promptly grabbed a roll of newspaper sitting in place of her shoes and threw it at the wall.

It hit the wall loudly, then thudded dully on the carpet.

Beth stared at it, but didn’t feel a change in her mood.

She approached the newspaper almost timidly, notebook— _diary_ —and pens still in her hands, and peered down at the newspaper sprawled out on the entryway carpet. And approximately between the moment she chose to approach and the millisecond she peered to look down at the print.

And lo and behold, some greater universal force from above or below or around had taken one furtive glance at Beth Washington, scoffed, and probably said something like, “Make her suffer,” because she was staring down at a rolled-up print edition of _The Onion_.

“What the hell,” she muttered, more considered internal monologue that had slipped past her vocal chords and anything, as she picked up the newspaper, tucked it under her arm, and continued her journey further into the house.

Luckily for Beth, neither Hannah nor Josh nor her workaholic parents were home when she managed to return from her endeavour into the real world; her guess placed Hannah at the physiotherapist, Josh at Chris’s house, and her workaholic parents… working. It was a miracle she managed to make it into the safety of her own room, really.

She dropped the notebook, packaged pens and newspaper onto her desk unceremoniously, then slouched into her desk chair. As she was tearing the cardboard and plastic of the package away to unearth one of the many brand-new pens she’d now be using only to accidentally dispose of them in a cup of pens that had run out of ink (her worst curse was her laziness when it came to getting rid of the old pens), there was a buzz from her phone that startled her. Now, this wasn’t to say that Beth wasn’t a social individual who was eighteen and clearly adjusted to a society reliant on texting, but the problem was 1) this was a new phone, because Hannah’s stumbling around in Beth’s jacket had lost Beth’s phone to the mystical and terrifying forests of Blackwood Mountain, and 2) she hadn’t given anyone her number. The second problem could be pinned on her sister, brother, parents and Dr. Hill knowing her number and therefore having the _chance_ to text her, but Beth knew that Hannah wouldn’t, Josh wouldn’t, and her parents and Dr. Hill were too far down the boomer hole to be capable of texting.

Actually, Dr. Hill _could_ be capable of texting. He could be texting _Josh_. But Dr. Hill was an asshole and probably didn’t even like her so there was no point in him texting Beth, who was also an asshole.

Against her better judgement, Beth opened the message.

Now this was odd. Problem 2 sprung up inside Beth’s mind again—she hadn’t given anyone her number. Who did? Was it Josh? Hannah? The boogeyman under her bed? More terrifyingly, had her parents finally figured out the texting world?

Anyways, way too loaded for her liking. _Unknown_ was stepping over multiple boundaries—they had to at least unlock level five friendship before getting to her tragic backstory. So she scrunched her brows together, shook her head, and put the phone down just as it buzzed again.

Oof, twice as loaded. Beth was very okay with also ignoring that message.

And then, because third time’s the charm—

Oh, how sweet. Someone missed her.

Well, that was definitely the threshold of socialisation she wanted to put up with. It was already a crime against humanity that this amount of people had her number without her permission. All she could do now was hope that no one else had received the slip, and put her phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’, in all capitals, for the foreseeable future.

Beth looked back at her notebook, then swung the pages open and tugged at the first ballpoint pen that she came in contact with. Then she changed her mind again, dropped the pen, grabbed her scissors from her desk drawer and began snipping away at the unrolling wad of newspaper before her. Until she finally had one headline cut out, small enough to fit across the page. To top it all off, she got out her glue stick and began pasting it into the journal.

Oh, boy goody. Beth was wrong when she said she was a middle schooler for using a diary—turns out she’d been a preschooler this entire time all along.

But admittedly, as she smoothed down the edges of the flimsy paper, the idea wasn’t _awful_ inside her head. With a wry half-grin, she grabbed the discarded pen again, and then, in all caps, wrote _EMILY_ next to her new headline.

> _Area Woman Not Yelling At You, She’s Just Saying_

That seemed pretty accurate, no?

Cruel, maybe. But there was no way _Unknown-3_ wasn’t Emily, the only person from The Incident™ who did law with Beth when Beth was still going to college. That is, before her life was completely derailed and she suddenly found it difficult to even get out of bed for prolonged hours of the day. Hell, it was a miracle Dr. Hill even saw her in person. Still, Emily kind of deserved that one, even if Beth was tempted to shoot back a resounding ‘fuck you’ in response to the girl’s message.

But then she looked back at the newspaper, now with one rectangle-shaped hole in the front page, and figured that she could save her response for later. She had a lot of anger to get out and a lot of remembering to do.

Beth didn’t like remembering. Not since February had come and gone.

But for this one instance, Beth would just have to remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: i do not have a set updating schedule. please do not get your hopes up; i was just very excited to post this chapter because it'd finally kickstart the plot!!
> 
> i just wanna say that this is totally inspired by coldmackerel's 'balance book' fic of Josh Washington, which i absolutely adored. of course, i'm not copying the story word-by-word, more using the concept of a diary and kind of putting my own little spin of it. by no means is the idea original or conventional, so feel free to call me out on it if you want but i am admitting to my own faults. other than that, feedback is always welcome and appreciated and thank you for reading my story.
> 
> p.s. i am so sorry for the formatting of the text messages. i grappled with it for half an hour before giving up. if you guys are okay with just text transcripts instead of me trying to be quirky and cool with images then please let me know


	3. unexpected, reluctant comfort

Beth didn’t get a lot of visitors nowadays.

This wasn’t saying Beth was unpopular; sure, she wasn’t up there in terms of popularity like Jess—although, her popularity sometimes seemed to stem more from being _known_ instead of being _liked_ —but she was no recluse either. She had her fair share of friends, even if her closest circle was initially seven morons plus her two siblings tacked on at the end and she hadn’t really talked to those guys anymore. Altogether, Beth could say with complete and utmost confidence that she had friends and a social life; hell, out of the three Washington children, she may have even been the most social one until she chose the life of becoming a hermit and arguing with her therapist.

Semantics.

But now, she hadn’t talked to her close circle in a while. Which meant visitors came sparsely, if at all. The most she could consider a visit was when Hannah came in with a plate of cookies she’d stress-baked and asked her if she wanted some. Beth would raise an eyebrow, then take the entire plate upon realisation that she’d forgotten to eat breakfast or lunch that day.

So colour her surprised when she heard a knock on the door that wasn’t the usual arrhythmic pattern of Hannah or the half-hearted slap on the door before promptly being swung open by Josh maneuver. Beth actually jumped at the timid two raps that echoed in her room, despite usually bravely declaring that not much scared her (that much was true; out of the three Washingtons, Josh loved horror movies, Hannah got squeamish and Beth… did not care for them in the slightest). Then, she realised she’d just spent the past ten seconds staring into space after no knocks followed, and she should probably go check it out or something.

In hindsight, Beth would definitely be the first to die in a horror movie.

Eh, whatever. Not the worst thing to happen to her by this point.

Beth flung her bedroom door open almost violently, squinting at the daylight coming in from the hallway and invading the dim expanse of her bedroom, to reveal one of the many blondes in her life—which was, to say, not many. Okay, maybe Beth wasn’t as slick as she thought she was.

Sam crossed her arms and raised a curious eyebrow, green eyes clearly taking in the scene before her.

And, well, there was a lot to unpack. Beth was wearing sweats and an oversized hoodie, but her beanie was discarded. She hadn’t straightened her hair in a while, which led to a wavy mess bunching around her bangs nicely complementing the circles under her eyes. Not to mention her very messy bedroom and vast expanse of _The Onion_ newspapers she’d found in a stack in one of the house’s many spare rooms, now all temporarily—or permanently, given how she was snipping into them—transferred to her own room.

Maybe it would be better for Sam to throw the whole suitcase away.

“Uh, hi, Sam,” Beth began awkwardly, after the girl before her made no move to talk. “Hannah’s room is that way.”

“I know,” Sam said, in a way that made Beth doubt that she knew. Or maybe she was here for… why _was_ Sam here? Sam was always _Hannah’s_ friend. They were joined at the hip when her and Hannah weren’t, with Sam being the voice of reason while staying adventurous and Hannah loving Sam to death for all her loveable tics. This wasn’t to say that Beth wasn’t friends with Sam. Sam was lovely. Sam was great. She was… actually, she tolerated Sam the most out of all of the other friends in their little circle, now that she thought about it. Go figure. But still, Sam was _Hannah’s_ friend.

“Then, uh…” Beth paused again, scrunching her brows together. She was too tired, too wired, and everything too inbetween, for this exchange to be happening. “Aren’t you gonna… go see her?”

“I wanted to check up on you.”

Oh.

Oh, _no_. No no no no _no_.

Out of all the people she expected—okay, maybe Emily was an outlier in this situation—she sure as hell did not expect _Sam_ to crack and ask her something so. So. Uh. _Vulnerable._ That’s the word. For a second, Beth considered her survival rates if she randomly combusted, or slammed the door in Sam’s face, or skimmed over the question completely. Unfortunately, the answer to all of those was a big fat zero, and Beth could feel her lungs constricting with the feeling of not having taken a breath since the words registered in the neurons inside her brain. She took a deep breath, then felt marginally worse because now she felt like crying.

Beth Washington doesn’t cry.

“I’m fine,” she finally choked out, after yet another awkward silence. Beth’s life seemed to be full of awkward silences these days. Maybe she was grateful for Hill’s constant prattling about moving on from trauma and whatnot. At least she had background noise then. This was downright awful. To at least recover from this experience, she forced out, “How about you?”

“Oh, no, you don’t get to avoid this one, Beth,” Sam said, part-amused and part-concerned, and Beth couldn’t even open her mouth to protest before the blonde was slipping past Beth and into her bedroom. The brunette cringed visibly, then turned around while Sam made quick work of tugging up her blinds— _ew, light_ , Beth’s inner vampire screamed—and stepping past newspaper clippings. She faced Beth again, and asked, “Try again. How are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Beth threw her hands up in the air. “Isn’t ‘fine’ a good enough answer? I feel fine.”

“Beth, I get it, it’s okay if you’re not fine,” Sam tried. And really—Sam was a saint for trying to get through to someone as stubborn as Beth, and maybe deep down, Beth would’ve been grateful had it been any other day or any other topic or just _not her_. “It’s okay. I get it. But you need to talk to someone—”

“About what? About how _fine_ I am?” Beth snapped. Sam pursed her lips, eyes flitting away. Beth recoiled; she knew that look. She knew it very well, mostly because it had come from the doctors that had cleared her, the clinical evaluator when Beth had adamantly stuck to her story of the night, and sometimes even Dr. Hill—though the latter usually did his best to contain those kinds of looks. But she’d seen it all before, slouched shoulders and all, and maybe the overwhelming sensation of knowing that Sam cared _so much_ and how she might’ve been the first one from the lodge to have bothered caring, other than that weird flurry of texts she got last night, was just too much for Beth. Because when her first two demands had finished ricocheting inside her brain like a stray bullet in a pool of gasoline, she fired up again. “Is that why you’re here, Sam? To _pity_ me?”

Sam had the decency to look taken aback this time. Either from the snarling tone that Beth’s voice took on or maybe the words themselves, but this time the blonde before her cracked. The tough and part-amused-part-concerned facade cracked and slipped to reveal genuine concern—not pity, either, just pure concern—at the state of the brunette. Or maybe not. Maybe she _was_ just pitying Beth, and Beth was reading into it all wrong like she always did when it came to people. 

“You didn’t respond to my text yesterday,” was what finally came from Sam’s mouth.

Beth’s brows raised halfway to her hairline. “Seriously?” Slipped out of her involuntarily. Then, she stormed over to her desk, picking up her phone from where it sat atop the pile of spare paper and glue stains, cringing at the sticky feeling of her phone case. For a moment, she forgot the seething anger she’d been feeling well up inside her chest. “Okay… well, in that case, I’ll assume that you’re _Unknown_.”

Sam shrugged. “Could be me.”

“That’s a yes,” Beth muttered, typing in the new contact name. “Who gave you my number?”

A pause.

“Actually, scratch that. I _know_ Hannah gave you my number.”

“She said you hadn’t been hanging out with her for a while,” Sam conceded. She shifted further into the spacious room, stepping around the pillow thrown onto the floor awkwardly. With a lighter tone, she added, “Apparently, you missed not one, but _two_ movie nights.”

“Busy,” Beth dismissed with a grunt.

“Oh, right, of course, I forgot you had a blooming social life while refusing to leave your bedroom.”

Damn it, Sam. She was never this sarcastic. Beth must’ve struck a nerve.

“Hannah’s worried for you, Beth,” Sam finally said at no response from the brunette. She’d stepped closer now, much to Beth’s own worry. “ _I’m_ concerned for you. And the others are, too.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they were _super_ worried about Hannah when they made her run into a snow storm,” Beth snarked.

“They…” Sam sighed, running a palm down her face. Then, the corners of her lips quirked up in a well-meaning manner. “They had no way of knowing what’d happen. I’m not making excuses for them, but I know they feel sorry.”

“Had no way of—Sam.” Beth’s tone fell flat again. She wanted to be nice to Sam, she really did. But it turned out being angry was fulfilling, and being nice or civil or _normal_ was exhausting nowadays. “It’s Hannah. You—you _know_ that Hannah gets upset. _They_ knew she’d get upset. They _knew_ —” Beth stopped herself. Her tone had risen dangerously again, and that fire kept igniting and sparking like a dying flamethrower. She suppressed a shiver at _that_ particular mental image, and soldiered through. “And yet they still did it. They knew what they’d be doing to her, and they knew how she’d react.”

Sam said nothing. For once, her silence was more welcome than any comforting words.

“And—and even if they _didn’t_ ,” Beth continued on her rant, voice still wavering, palms pressed flat against the wood of her desk in hopes of stopping herself from gesturing wildly and angrily. “Say Hannah didn’t—didn’t run out of the lodge that night. She was _devastated_ when I found her. Even if she’d just run into one of the rooms and locked herself in, what _then_? Would the rest of them just not have been _sorry_?”

“Beth—”

“They’re not fucking sorry, Sam. Not for what they should be. They’re just sorry that it almost cost them.”

For once, it looked like Sam didn’t quite know what to say.

And wasn’t that ironic? Usually, the great Samantha Giddings was always ready with a comforting phrase or a sympathetic nod or shake of the head, wrapping her arms around Hannah when the latter would find herself screwed over by some morons while Beth went and kicked their asses to hell and back. In fact, the thing Sam was best at—aside from rock-climbing and looking good—was just saying the right thing at the right time. Because she was so empathetic, and so caring, and so _nice_ , and she always knew how to put herself in others’ shoes and forgive them right away. Yet here Sam was, her fingers digging into the sleeves of her zip-up hoodie, with her lips pressed together and brows furrowed and looking like there was no way to properly respond to what Beth had just told her.

Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe there was no right thing to say this time. Maybe Beth was just saying it for the sake of getting it off her chest, just so that she could breathe without that particular burning coal clogging her airways.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

When the silence had become too deafening and Beth knew she’d lost, her shoulders slumped, the energy and fire draining from her in one fell swoop. “Go, Sam,” she said, softly. Her throat felt raw, like it had been scrubbed out from the inside and she hadn’t gotten a gulp of water in days. “Go check on Hannah. Please.”

It took a second, maybe two, maybe more, but finally, Sam relented from her spot planted next to Beth, and in Beth’s peripheries she could see the blonde slowly slink out of her room, door swinging gracefully and quietly before closing with a soft _click_. And Beth was alone again.

“Fuck,” Beth murmured, sinking into the desk chair. Her eyes burned and there was an odd, coal-shaped lump in her throat, but she blinked the fire away and swallowed the lump before looking back down at the article headline that had been caught underneath her relentless palm.

> _Friend Attempting To Provide Comfort Has No Clue What The Fuck She’s Talking About_

For a moment, Beth thought that the universe was laughing at her. Really, just a big old belly-laugh that came from the bottom of the rib cage and wound its way up until her shoulders were shaking and she was gasping for air, the burn in her eyes still there and the hoarse quality of her throat still scratching. And then Beth realised she was laughing at herself, and at her absolute state of misery.

But the headline—oh, no, that was good. That was a strangely awful and odd way for the world to repay its favour toward her.

She paused to judge the headline a little, wondering whether it was insensitive to pin that statement on her friend after she’d just been so valiant and even entered Beth’s room to try and comfort her. Beth cared about Sam—maybe a lot more than she should, considering she was _Hannah’s_ friend and _Josh_ was the one to have had a crush on her, and _Beth_ had always just been _there_ —and she knew it was probably fucked up to summarise that emotional spat in such a ruthless headline. Her strong suit had never been comedy, that was Josh’s thing; Beth was more of a snarker and a sarcastic type. The punchlines never worked for her, because she was too honest and blunt and rude to make them work in her favour.

Beth glued the headline under the first one she’d managed, scrawling _SAM_ next to it in big, looping letters. The ending loop of the _M_ looked heart-shaped.

Totally unintentional detail, Beth tried to reason.

Ah, well. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

* * *

It was several hours later, when she had gotten through an almost worrying amount of scrapbooking, that there was a much more familiar knock on Beth’s bedroom door, followed by the quiet gust of air that signified the door had opened regardless.

“Hey,” Hannah said, as her way of greeting. Beth only then realised that she hadn’t even _seen_ Hannah today. Woken up all too early—unusual, considering her sleeping patterns as of late—and breakfast scarfed down by five in the morning only for her to have crawled back into the comfort of her room for the rest of her day. Something akin to guilt stabbed Beth’s chest as she dared a glance back, Hannah’s hair loose and flowing, boot still securely attached to her leg as she hobbled in.

“Hi.”

There were no more words needed to be exchanged, technically. The Washingtons were nothing if not masters at communicating without words—or maybe they were just masters at being so emotionally stunted that words came with more difficulty than just a few meaningful glances. Even Hannah, who was usually naive and oblivious, had inherited this trait, meaning that Beth was left staring down her twin sister in their secret but silent language, hoping that she could mask her anger for just a minute longer.

Hannah was… well. Hannah was her twin. Beth loved her twin, and they loved each other because they were sisters and, most of all, _twins_. They’d always been joined at the hip, they wore matching clothes when they were younger until they grew into their respective styles, and it used to be near impossible telling them apart until Beth got bangs and straightened her hair and wore a perpetual scowl, while Hannah got glasses and grew her hair out into long, natural waves. Ultimately, they were different people but really, at their core, they were one and the same.

Hannah was also older than Beth—five minutes, a difference Beth used to scoff at—but she certainly didn’t _act_ it.

Fuck—no. She was not going down that train of thought. She would not resent her twin sister, not when her eyes were so open and vulnerable for her twin to read. A single slip-up and Hannah would have her emotions pinned down.

Hannah was naive, but she wasn’t _stupid_.

After a long, somewhat-terse silence during which Beth had at least the decency to sit up straighter in her desk chair and Hannah had approached Beth to gently brush the latter’s developing waves out of her face, the older twin finally spoke. “Do you… this might sound stupid, but are you up for a trip?”

Beth tilted her head to look up at her sister. “To?”

Almost immediately, a half-courageous smile crossed Hannah’s face. “To The Field.”

Oh.

_Oh?_

For some reason, Beth suddenly felt thunderstruck. Like Hannah had suggested something revolutionary, like that Mike was actually a jerk and everyone should be acknowledging that or that Jess was too hot to be that mean. Her eyes widened, brows pinched and lips parted, but for a few moments, not a single word escaped her out of sheer incredulity at such an idea.

Hannah…

“You’re a genius.”

“Okay, uh, can you drive? This genius still has a broken leg.”

“Right, yeah,” Beth said, almost immediately. She’d learned her lesson—the whole walking thing was growing old very fast, even if it had been her only source of the outside air in… a while. Nevertheless, Beth barely had the time to agree before Hannah was giddily tugging her to her feet, almost a speed-demon despite the boot securing her to the ground with a limp. Beth almost felt a small laugh of her own escape her lips with the sheer excitement her twin had taken on, and stopped to ask, “Which car are we taking?”

“Well, Josh is home, so I figured we’d steal his Jeep again,” Hannah feigned innocence as she spoke, but Beth knew that they were both secretly thinking the same thing, a grin forming on her own face. Josh’s Jeep it was. It wasn’t like he had to know, at least as long as Beth didn’t crash with it or something.

Also, yes, _again_. Josh’s Jeep was unfortunately the victim of most of the twins’ heists and escapades. Sometimes Josh got very close to finding out and it didn’t help that he was paranoid as all hell about his ‘baby’, but Hannah was good enough at choosing those moments to cover her face with a glass of orange juice so she wouldn’t give them away while Beth poker-faced her way through some fabricated lie. Twins: 1, psych student: 0.

Suck on that, Dr. Hill.

The twins piled into the jeep and off they drove, into the warming spring air of California’s suburbs. They seemed to silently agree with turning the radio on and turning all conversation off, at least until they reached The Field; an age-long tradition (since Josh got his licence) of the Washingtons kept shrouded in obscurity and above all _secret_ from the rest of their friends and the world. This was their thing, sometimes with Josh, sometimes just the girls, sometimes Josh and Beth, and sometimes Beth went alone if she wasn’t on talking terms with her siblings.

Thirty minutes of driving and they’d long since stopped seeing the sprawl of suburban front lawns neatly manicured alongside kids playing in cul-de-sacs; this was past the city limits. What greeted them initially was thickets of trees—which made Beth’s skin crawl and her foot press down on the gas pedal harder than it should’ve—before they finally made it further inland and the land before them contorted into abandoned farmland and ramshackle fences lining the single-lane road stretching for miles. The air was brisk yet warm, the sun having fallen low by now; it was no more than an orange haze on one horizon, while the other grew with greyish-blue darkness signifying an approaching nighttime.

Eventually, the Jeep slowed to a pattering crawl, before Beth finally parked the car and killed the engine. And then they were at The Field, and Hannah was already starting to hustle out of the car while Beth took a moment to breathe in slowly, deeply.

She got out.

The Field was… well, not an actual field. It was just an open plot of land, some four or so miles away from the nearest farm which the fenced-off paddock belonged to. But right next to it, there was just open land; tufts of grass peering out from orange-brown soil, some hills and rocks forming into mountains in the vast open expanse of land. It was scenic, and best of all, it was isolated.

In hindsight, it’d be a great spot to get murdered.

And considering what the tradition at The Field was, it probably _sounded_ like they were getting murdered.

Beth joined her sister, who was standing and wistfully staring at the miles of dirt and hills ahead of them. That was all there was to it; dirt, hills, grass, and more dirt. But Beth liked it. And she knew Hannah did too, even if Hannah felt more at home in the city and somewhere manmade. But Hannah endured this for Beth, if it was just one thing she could endure for her twin.

Hannah glimpsed over to Beth, whose eyes were trained on the horizon. A blending split of orange and darkish grey forming into blue, clashing and melding together before their eyes. Beth looked at Hannah only when she realised her eyes were trained on her, before raising an inquisitive eyebrow. Finally, Hannah asked, “Do you… do you need a moment?”

Hannah knew her so well.

“Don’t wanna deafen you,” Beth tried to joke, but her tone was flatter than it had been throughout the day. Maybe a trip to The Field was long, long overdue.

Hannah nodded, pressing her lips together and eyes flitting down, before Beth finally stepped forward a few paces. A few specks of orange soil managed to wind up on the fabric of her sweats, she noted as she looked down at her feet as she walked. Just two more steps, and then she stopped, staring out ahead. The air felt warm and cold at the same time, and Beth could feel how heavy her heart was.

And then, she screamed.

It wasn’t a terrified scream; nothing like when she’d been chased by some monstrous creature with her sister in tow a few months ago. Not like when she’d felt the ground beneath her give way and the branch above her snap. This was an angry scream, a bitter yell into the void of California’s desolate land, going, going, going until her throat was hoarse and it was echoing around them like they were in a spacious cavern. And maybe this was their spacious little cavern; a safe bubble away from the stress of _Unknowns_ texting her and feeling bad about snapping at Sam and resenting everything.

She took in a long breath, the air feeling crisp and clean. She let it out again, just like her doctor had taught her. Seven in, hold four, seven out.

Beth felt much better.

Ironically enough, with a clear mind, a headline she’d briefly read and abandoned on her desk came back to her, and a smile managed to crack its way onto her face.

> _Study Finds Expressing Anger In Unhealthy Ways Incredibly Satisfying_

_Damn right_ , her mind added for her, her hands finding their spot on her hips. She turned around again, to see Hannah watching her, somewhat uncertain, but at the sight of Beth’s humoured grin, a relieved smile of her own bloomed. Beth jogged back, then paused. “Need a scream?”

“I’m not—this isn’t really my thing,” Hannah said. Hannah was right. This was a Beth and Josh thing, mostly. Both of them were bad at coping with anger, though they expressed that in different ways usually. Hannah joined them on these trips because they were Washington Sibling Exclusives, but nevertheless, Beth hadn’t seen Hannah scream out of frustration in The Field in… a while.

“Oh, come on,” Beth pressed, “I’m sure it’ll be, like… super cathartic.”

“Beth, come on. This isn’t my thing. This is your thing.”

That was a really nice way of saying Beth was the angry twin.

“Hannah.” Hannah looked back at Beth. A crooked grin was still visible on Hannah’s face, probably meant to dismiss the situation and say that she was fine with not screaming into the presumable void, but Beth was not having it. “You have a right to be angry. In fact, you have _every_ right to be angry. Angrier than me, actually. Now, come on. We need two dumbasses screaming into the void tonight, and I’ve already done my part.”

“I thought I was a genius.”

“You’d be a genius to take this free coupon to scream into the void.”

Hannah shook her head, rolling her eyes. But a bigger smile was already finding its way onto her face. “So, what do I do? Do I just…?”

Beth shrugged. “You scream. Put all your angry feelings into it. Come on, I know you got some.”

“Beth…”

“Hannah.” She crossed her arms. “Last call.”

And then, Hannah screamed, too. It wasn’t as angry as Beth’s as much as it was shrill, but it was loud and it echoed and it was _perfect_. In that moment, Beth really did feel Hannah’s anger—and she knew that her naive, sensitive sister harboured more than enough anger. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Beth was angrier than Hannah, but _Hannah_ had been the one who was humiliated by her own friends and then ran into the woods. It seemed that Hannah had melted with the fire inside her while Beth just sparked and fizzled. But now—now, this was good. This was better. It was catharsis of the highest order.

The two of them laughed as they piled back into Josh’s Jeep, Beth performing a quick turn over double lines with zero traffic before they were speeding down the road again. For a few moments, the high of releasing so much pent-up energy kept the mood of the car enlightened, with animated chattering and the good-natured crackle of the radio keeping the twins going, before finally, the mood sobered and Hannah spoke again. “Beth?”

“Hm?”

“Are you…” She paused, seeming to debate with herself on whether she should ask her question. But by now, it was far too late to backtrack; Beth would make her spit it out regardless. In some ways, Beth was Hannah’s courage personified, pushing her to do more when she thought she couldn’t. “Are you still mad at them? I mean, Sam. Jess. Matt. And all that.”

That was a lot more sobering than Beth expected.

She pressed her lips together, fingers momentarily tightening on the steering wheel. Her eyes were trained on the road, but other than the car that had passed them a few minutes ago and the night sky slowly creeping into the rearview mirror, there was nothing of significant note to behold. So she could think while keeping an eye on the road. _Was_ she mad? Did she even have a right to be mad? She wasn’t Hannah. She didn’t get pranked. No, she just ran out into the snow after her twin sister after she’d been humiliated, and looked death square in the eye because of it. But really, could she even be mad at the people of her group?

She couldn’t be mad at Sam. That was for sure. Chris, probably not. He’d been out cold with her brother, who she was also not mad at.

But the others?

“I don’t know,” Beth said, after a long moment of hesitation that may have spoken for itself in regards to Beth’s true, heartfelt answer. Next to her, Hannah shifted. “I don’t know anymore.”

“But you won’t be mad forever, right?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay,” Hannah let out a long, audible breath, as if she seemed all too reassured on the matter. “Sam was worried.”

 _I don’t blame her,_ was what Beth wanted to say, but instead what came out was, “Well, you can let her know that she doesn’t need to worry anymore.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Hannah said, except this time Beth caught on to the tone she was using. It was what she did whenever Josh tried to assure her everything was fine, before glancing over to Beth with a stare that said _help me out with this_. Hannah was smart, Beth had to give her that, but there were some things she just couldn’t know. Except, she caught on far too quick usually, and then she used _that_ tone. Beth felt herself bristling a little bit, fingers tightening on the steering wheel once more, chest lighter but heart still heavy.

Beth didn’t want Hannah to worry. Beth didn’t want Sam to worry. Beth didn’t want _anybody_ to worry.

But she couldn’t really stop them from making their own conclusions, could she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I know you're all pointing your fingers at me, but yes; this will probably be a Sath fic (if i can get myself to write romance), and it may not seem like it based on today's update, but please be patient. Also, I always considered that based on Beth being the Responsible Washington and having a high relationship status with Sam in the Prologue, they'd probably confide in each other on problems they can't share with Hannah (hence the scene this chapter). Sorry, just wanted to clarify in case her behaviour seemed OOC.
> 
> Anyways, sorry for the delay (life's a shitstorm of work, yada nada) in the new chapter! Hope you all enjoyed and feedback is appreciated as usual :)

**Author's Note:**

> who asked for this, you may ask? No one. this is completely self-serving because i wanna analyse my girl with her 10 mins of screentime after Beth grew on me for some ungodly reason.
> 
> disclaimer; I am very sorry if these characters ever seem OOC or things seem bad - this is my first time writing fanfiction for Until Dawn and I have absolutely no idea what to do or how to act. Feedback is always welcome. Also, I own none of the elements of Until Dawn and this is, like the title implies, fanfiction originally meant to be a crack concept but developed into Feelings because my stupid monkey brain wants to change canon. Thanks.


End file.
